pdxfisher

Great report! I tried a popper for a while on my last trip but never had a sniff. I am sure there must be some fish up shallow but all my bites and fish came out of 15 to 30 feet. That last picture looks so peaceful and serene, just beautiful.

Another great report and beautiful pictures of bass and scenery! Sounds like an awesome day out on the water. You are lucky to be catching them on moving baits. I have been dredging the depths for my fish lately. What is your water temp? It was 63 out here on Sunday. I am still puzzled why the fish are so deep out here.

I hit the Columbia out of Stevenson on Sunday the 6th. After my last poor outing I was really hoping to have a good day. The wind first thing was out of the East and seemed a bit stronger than forecast. It was still fishable but I was getting bounced up and down pretty good. I started out throwing a popper (first time this year). I figured with the sloppy conditions I would need to throw a plopper or a popper so I though a popper would make an easier target in the waves. I really have no idea if that theory holds any water since i did not get so much as a sniff on topwater all day long (not that I threw it much after the initial attempt). I figured, that's OK the fish must be kegged up out on the tip of the point in the rocks. Once again my instincts proved to be worthless and I did not get a sniff on a drop shot, Ned rig or wobblehead. I was starting to get a bad feeling, like the bad luck from the previous weekend was still stuck to me. The next two spost I hit also proved fruitless - and bass-less The bad feeling was getting worse but I said to myself, "I just need to fish harder and more carefully". I made it to my fourth spot, which is usually always good for at least a fish or two. I started probing the deep rocks slowly with my wobblehead jig and Zoom Z-craw. Eventually as I was lifting the jig up to ease it along I felt a thump. I reeled down and swung back to nothing. I cast back out and felt that thump again and slammed the hook home. Oh man, this was a big fish. I leaned hard on that fish when the unimaginable happened. Pop! I broke that fish off. I could not believe it. I felt truly cursed. I had just replaced my line on that reel during the week with a supposedly abrasion resistant fluorocarbon line. When I reeled the end of my line was in tatters. After 2.5 hours I hook my first fish and it breaks my 12lb line. That was the low point of the day. The line was badly scraped up and had little bits peeling off. I have never had that happen before. I was so mad!!! After I settled down I figured that if that was the case I was going to have to check my line often and retie constantly. So that is what I did. I am happy to say that I did not break off any more fish but I probably retied 20 or 30 times during the course of the day. So after tying on a new wobblehead I went back to work. I missed the next two fish as well. I said to myself, "come on John, just catch a dang fish". Finally at the 3 hour mark I had yet another thump on the wobblehead and this one stuck! It was not a monster (maybe 14 or 15") but it felt as if a monster weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was not going to get skunked! I continued to fish that spot without any more action. The next spot also did not produce but I really felt like it was going to happen for me and that kept my focus razor sharp. I finally made it to one of my favorite spots and that is where the magic started to happen. I caught 3 bass on 4 casts including a nice 2lb 13oz fat girl. I knew I was going to be OK I kept fishing around that same general area (there is a hump and point that almost kiss) and picked up a bunch more including my day's best fish, a 19" 3lb 10oz beauty. The only down side is that part way through fishing that spot my camera froze up (a bandaid appeared on the screen for a while and eventually cleared itself) and I missed filming several fish including another 18.5" 3lb 2oz chunk. I have to say that I did not mind that too much but this is the second time this year that has happened. Not sure what the issue is but I ordered a new SD card. Anyway, after I eventually tired out that spot I went looking for more piles of fish. I was brimming with confidence and knew I was going to catch more. The next spot only producedd one fish but then I noticed a waypoint that I had not yet fished this year. It was a spot I had forgotten I had ever marked. Well, I may have forgotten but the bass sure did not. That spot was LOADED! I was getting bit on every cast. It was a long skinny point that topped off around 30' and fell off into 60' all around it. At the very tip it jumped up to about 17' and then fell off in a cliff like fashion into 60' of water. By this time of the day the earlier East wind had died and it was really calm. I was able to easily position myself and was just catching (or missing) fish after fish. The only thing that slowed me down was constantly retying after pretty much every fish. They weren't monsters but the were pound and a quarter to two pound fish and those are a blast to catch. I ended the day with 19 bass but If the wind had not picked up suddenly and ferociously I think I could have caught 30 easily. Once the wind picked up I just could not hold myself on that spot and fish. After about 15 minutes of not being able to feel the rocks that were holding the fish I decided to call it a day. Every fish came on the wobblehead. I did periodically try a drop shot and a Ned rig but never had a bite on either of those (but I would quickly switch back to the wobblehead so maybe I did not give them a really fair shake). The water temp was 63 and the bass all came from 15-30' of water. Overall, I was completely elated as I pedaled back to the ramp into the teeth of the now West wind. I did not mind paying the wind tax at all after a day like that. I think the best days are the ones that start off bad and end good. Nothing like overcoming adversity and a bad start to kick bass! Here are some photos and the video from the day (including some tribulations at the beginning).

It's good to get your butt kicked every now and again. Just don't want it to be a regular thing

Complete opposite of my last trip. Congrats on the awesome day.

I fished the Willamette for the first time in a long time on Saturday the 28th. I was expecting a typical 40 to 60 fish day with a handful of decent sized fish mixed in. That was about as far from what I actually accomplished as possible. I fished all day long for only 13 small bass (biggest was only an embarrassing 12.75"). I am just not sure where they were. Most of the fish I did catch came out of 10-20' of water but I did fish deeper and shallower. The only things I did not do was fish the weedbeds and beat the bank. I am not sure if all the coho running up the river have pushed the bass off their normal haunts, if I was just not doing the right thing or if they were there and just not feeding. I usually mark quite a fish around the 15-20' rockpiles but I was not seeing much at all last Saturday. I am still pretty perplexed as to where the fish were hiding. Maybe there is something to that catching one on the first cast being bad luck I was pretty stoked to catch a little largemouth on my first cast of the day. It sucked under my stick bait pretty quietly (not super aggressive). I only had one other bite on topwater. Caught one on a jerkbait and the rest were on a drop shot or Ned rig. Overall it was one of my most disappointing days of fishing in a really long time. Oh well, I will just have to try hard again next time and hope that the fish make it up to me after realizing how rude they were being on this last trip Here is a short video with some short fish.

OMG! Those fish are just ridiculous!! Awesome report!

Great report! Awesome that you caught so many nice fish. They definitely look like they are fattening up for winter. It is interesting that caught them on the popper but not the spook. I watched an episode of Major League Fishing where they were in WV in the fall and a popper was the money bait. They anglers said they thought that its smaller profile better mimic-ed the size of the fall bait. Was your popper smaller than your spook? I have not been out in a few weeks but maybe next trip out I will have to tie on a popper if my walking bait is not getting bit.

Wow! That is an amazing trip! 70 topwater fish is just a crazy day. You probably remember the one cast where you did not get bit

Great report and I love the new handle. It is awesome to be able to fish places where bigger boats can't go. Out here I am fishing big water but when I lived in NC I used to drag my little homemade boat to all kinds of small waters like you fish now. I love it out here but I miss those days too.

That is a monster. There is a youtube of a guy with a 40+lb 5 fish limit from Dworshak. In that video he culled a few fish over 7lbs. Just a crazy fishery.

Those smallmouth are ridiculous! They look more like a bluegill in shape.

That is an awesome pair of trophy fish!

I like to count because it helps me realize when I have been spending too much time on a spot where they have stopped biting. It is too easy for me to spend an extra 15 minutes or half hour on a spot that has gone dead. Do that 3 or 4 times and I have lost over an hour. I guess just overall it improves my focus on catching rather than fixing.

Usually I start in March and fish until some point in November. It really depends on how much rain we are getting and the flows. Usually the fishing is really good until the water gets too dirty and fast with the winter rains. It is possible to bass fish year round but in the winter I fish for sturgeon since they bite better in the cold and/or muddy water.

Wow! I am surprised that it is so large fish selective. Of course I never caught a smallmouth under 10lbs on an A-rig

Nice!

That was an awesome fish! I bought a few A-rigs but I am afraid to throw them in the kayak. I see myself spending a day untangling 8 rods that are in one big snarl

Last few trips I have been getting better quality with a wobblehead (swing head) jig and a 5" zoom z craw trailer. There is a ton of shad smolt in the river (Columbia) that are outmigrating right now but the bigger fish seem to be wanting to eat crawdads.

Sorry for your bad luck but that was a fantastic read @Bluebasser86. Hopefully you cleansed yourself of all your bad luck for the upcoming championship!

Wow, those fish are super skinny. They look like they just finished spawning (obviously not but that is what they resemble). What kind of forage is in the pond you were fishing?

I hit the Columbia out of Stevenson, WA on Saturday the 6th. The wind was forecast to be light - and it actually was! The only downside was the smoke from the wildfires was pretty terrible. I thought with all that smoke (like a heavy overcast all day long) that the bass would be shallow and eating topwater. I started out throwing my usual waking bait but did not get a sniff. I was really surprised. I switched over to a spinnerbait and picked up two small bass pretty quickly up shallow and then nothing. I was pretty confused because often on these kinds of days I pick up my topwater and never put it back down. The next spot I fished I had a couple of bites on the spinnerbait that did not stick. After that I decided I should try some deeper water spots, even though I was sure that was not going to yield anything. I arrived a nice structure that is a point that drops off into about 30' and then has a rocky hump that pops up to about 23' deep. I started tossing around the wobblehead with Zoom Z craw trailer and could not get a sniff. I thought I was marking some bass so I was once again surprised. I was thinking the fishing would be on fire and I had just gone an hour with nothing to show for it. I decided that since I thought I was marking bass I should not leave. I picked up a drop shot and that was equally fruitless. My fishing was so fruitless I thought I was detecting the onset of scurvy I almost left but instead thought I should give the Ned rig a shot. That turned out to be a good call. It is always hard to say if the bass just started biting or if it was the change of lure but I started getting bit and catching some fish. No big ones but after an hour of nothing the pound to pound and half fish feel pretty awesome. After a while of moving around that structure with the Ned rig the bite seemed to slow and the wind picked up a little bit. I decided before leaving I would give the wobblehead one more try since it is so much easier to maintain bottom contact with it. So on the same structure that had yielded no bites on the wobblehead an hour before I was all of a sudden not able to keep them off of it. Maybe they just wanted to sleep in that morning. Every fish I caught for the rest of the day came on the wobblehead. I would occasionally pick up the Ned rig or drop shot for a dozen casts before going back to the money. In the end, I found a couple of spots within the spot where the bass were concentrated. The one spot was the downstream end of the one hump. Those bass were in 26-35' of water (next to 50' of water). Another was the upstream tip of the hump in ~26' of water. The last was the tip of the point in about 22' of water. I was surprised they were that deep on an overcast day but the old saying of "don't tell the fish where the should be" perfectly described the day. When that spot eventually died I head upstream further. I had to skip a couple of spots that had bassboats sitting on them but eventually I made it to the spot where I had caught the 5lber two weeks prior. That spot was similar to the first structure in that it was really the spot within the spot. I fished that place for about 1/2 hour (it is also a big structure) before I found them. Once again upon finding them the fishing was fast and furious. I have to say that those fish are starting to fatten up and they seem to be getting stronger by the week. I almost lost my rod late in the day when a bass nearly ripped the rod out of my hands on a violent strike on the wobblehead as I was reeling it off the bottom for the next cast. I had quite a few hits that way. I assume they were tracking it along the bottom and when it took off towards the surface it triggered them to bite it like they were filled with rage. The best part was the size of the fish I was catching on the wobblehead. I ended with between 10 and 12 bass over 2lbs (by the end I was not weighing some of them). My best 5 went 14lb 4oz. I had a tie for big fish with two 3lb 2oz bass. The amazing thing is that one of those 3lb 2oz fish was only ~17' long - that is a fatty! That was an awesome day on the water!! Here are some pics of some of the fish: Here is video from the day: https://youtu.be/mVPSEIuO9yg?si=17jM4VuGwS3tbRqs

Great report and pics. That maze picture is so interesting looking. Seems like an uncountable number of targets to cast at. Beautiful for sure but it seems like it would be challenging to find the magic spots!

That was a really nice fish! Catching one like that on a tough day sure helps make the day feel different! Nice thing about the kayak is that it is just as easy for me to pull it up the ramp on a windy day as it is on a calm one

Water clarity varies from 5' to about 12' in the Columbia. The fish are not too pressured so some days I can power fish but some days I need to spend most of the day with a drop shot or Ned rig in my hand. I agree that too much wind in those finesse situations makes it pretty challenging. The wobblehead has been working well lately for me and I am grateful for that!